The Online Literary Magazine at Arizona State University

A Child Out of Alcatraz

Spillers is Phoenix’s premier short fiction storytelling event. Spillers organizers pick 6 of Phoenix’s best writers, put them on a stage, feature them in 2 episodes of the Spillers After Show podcast, and publish their stories in a collectible book available the night of the event.

The event takes place Monday, May 2nd, 2016 @ 7:30 PM in the Crescent Ballroom.

1. Joel Salcido: Joel translates the poetry of the barrio pigeons into surrealist prophecies. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at Arizona State University, and a member of the Gutta Collective, ARTRATs, and Chronic Illness.

2. Michael Holladay: Michael was born and raised in Kentucky. He is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Saint Ann’s Review, Paper Darts, Fiction Southeast, and elsewhere.

3. David Waid:David has two published short stories available on Amazon: Wicked and Loving Lies and Festival of Rogues. His debut novel, The Conjurers, is currently available for pre-order and publishes on June 1st.

4. Tara Ison: Tara is the author of the novels, A Child out of Alcatraz, The List, and Rockaway, the award-winning essay collection, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, and the short story collection Ball. She is an Associate Professor of Fiction at ASU.

5. Paul Mosier: Paul’s fourth novel was acquired by HarperCollins as part of a two-book deal. The middle-grade Train I Ride will appear everywhere on January 10, 2017, and an even more depressing novel will come a year after that.

6. Matt Bell: Matt is the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as several other books. His next story collection, A Tree or a Person or a Wall, will be published in Fall 2016. A native of Michigan, he now teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.

Crescent Ballroom is a 21+ venue, so review the entrance policies on their website. The event is ticketed.

Peter Turchi visits with A Muse and A Maze, his followup to Maps of the Imagination. Joining him is screenwriter Tara Ison, who presents Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies,her new collection of non-fiction essays.

With his characteristic genius for finding connections between writing and the stuff of our lives, Peter Turchi ventures into new and even more surprising territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle making and its flip side, puzzle solving. As he teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling, he uncovers the magic—the creation of credible illusion—that writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians.Cinema is a universal cultural experience, one that floods our senses with images and sounds, a powerful force that influences our perspective on the world around us. Ison discusses the universal aspects of film as she makes them personal, looking at how certain films across time shaped and molded who she has become. Drawing on a wide ranging catalog of films, both cult and classic, popular and art-house, Reeling Through Life examines how cinema shapes our views on how to make love, how to deal with mental illness, how to be Jewish, how to be a woman, how to be a drunk, and how to die with style.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Called “one of the country’s foremost thinkers on the art of writing” by the Houston Chronicle, PETER TURCHI’S books include A Muse and A Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer; Suburban Journals: The Sketchbooks. He has also coedited, with Andrea Barrett, A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft and The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work; and, with Charles Baxter, Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. From 1993 to 2008 he directed the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. Turchi recently taught at Arizona State University, where he was director of the creative writing program, and he’s currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Houston.Tara Ison is the author of the novels The List, A Child Out of Alcatraz (a Finalist for The Los AngelesTimes Book Prize), and Rockaway, selected as a 2013 Best Books of Summer by O Magazine. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Nerve, Publishers Weekly, and numerous anthologies. She is the co-author of the cult film Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.For more information please visit: http://www.changinghands.com/event/turchi-feb2015